Posts by Muscleguy 1954 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2008
My understanding is that UK govt funding they fully expected to get did not happen. UKGov appears to have killed them. Scotland cannot be allowed to do things for ourselves. We might get delusions of being a viable independent concern. That Glasgow builds more satellites than anywhere else in Europe done largely without UKGov support is an embarrassment to Westminster.
The real life question is where will rUK get its power from once Scotland is Independent with our massive excess of renewable power with vastly more which can be installed. A few cables to the continent and Ireland or even the Faroes etc and you will have to pay market rate for it and bid with everybody else.
I think the EU still plans to build a HVDC superconducting spine up the middle of the North Sea we can plug into.
Wow what will the world do with all this power once the wheels come of LLM’s as they start to run into the sand in terms of progress?
It isn’t even very smart, it has no common sense, cannot reason etc. Saw and obviously AI image of a swank house covering all of a steep rocky island. Except there was a car in the forecourt with nowhere for it to go except the swimming pool. Also the stairs from the dock at sea level ended several meters below the house platform. Also no solar panels or turbines about to power this swank dwelling. IOW nothing practical about the image.
Cloudfare apps that actually work?
I have lost track of the number of things I am unable to view on my phone as the cloudfare app supposedly testing whether I’m real or not simply hangs. I have an iPhone X so not super old. I can get through all the other bot checkers but not them. So I find my heart fails to bleed for them.
Using an LLM do write code. You need a specific AI which is specified in code writing. Instead they built generalist LLMs which everyone tries to use as expert systems. At least the medics tend to take an off the shelf one then teach it what it needed to know. Though one I read about recently was not very good at spotting cancers. it wasn’t subtle enough. Hunan eyes were much better. In medicine there’s always a human in the loop on those.
Other email clients are available. Outlook is not the only email client in the world. I use Thunderbird here at home. I have multiple accounts open on it. It’s absolutely fine. I have to use Outlook at work. I have no control of what’s on my office computer, or the emails I get. I’m the Science Technician and I get a huge slew of emails for the teachers. I delete unread the vast majority of emails I get at work.
I have to use Word at work to set up and print labels. I do the same here but with LO. LO sometimes does weird things like not properly grouping items or aligning things you don’t want aligned but I have always managed to work around those. With Word that is much more difficult.
BTW the HSE website lets you download all the chemical warning symbols in colour. You just select one, copy it, past it in, resize and move it and those labels in colour for impact make the kids that bit more careful.
Scotland is well placed to cash in then. We have around twice as much renewable energy as we need including storage options and stacks of water for cooling (that we aren’t using for the whisky and gin of course). After Independence when we’re uncoupled from the unfair UK energy market we should be paying a lot less for electrickery than we do now.
This will of course be for sale to rUK, at a price.
But Britain doesn’t have just one legal system. Scots law is completely separate, so is the law in Northern Ireland. Since Devolution Welsh law has diverged from English law to the extent that the Welsh are considering separating theirs out. So there will be English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish law (assuming none of the entities has left the fictional union).
I applied for a job with Carphone Warehouse, phone # supplied. I didn’t even get an interview but a couple of months later I got a sales call from them and put 2 & 2 together. Invoked GDPR told they only had my details for a job application and they had better delete them from their sales list or I would escalate it.
I have not heard them since so they know they were being naughty.
I have never been able to connect to the wifi at work despite following the instructions and being fairly technically competent. Android or iPhone. I have 10GB of data a month and never use it all so I just do not bother any more. It gets used for looking up chemical data on wikipedia during work time. I might scroll twitter during downtime. It plays music to a bluetooth speaker.
I have Outlook on my iPhone 10. I have to prod it lots periodically to get it to put up notifications. It is otherwise well behaved. Though Outlook generally assumes if someone sends me a message with a meeting in it then it MUST be one I MUST attend.
I work in a school, I’m not a teacher but I get a lot of teacher relevant emails (don’t ask me why). Lots of these have meetings in them . . .
Indeed, I live in Scotland but have family in New Zealand. That you can fly Dubai or Doha to Auckland direct is a boon. It was very frustrating to touch down in Brisbane on the way. Auckland is just across the ditch and here we were on the ground for 90min. Add on landing, takeoff and taxiing.
Extend that benefit in range further and further is a better investment than supersonic.
The exception might be the supersonic space plane being developed in New Zealand. You go ballistic travelling in a much less dense less resistant medium. Safety and radiation exposure need to be worked out. But that would be a thing for aircrew. I don’t go back very often so it would not be much of a concern any more than it is on conventional flights.
GPS interference is real. Russia is doing it in the Baltic causing problems for the Finns and Balts. A black hat could make it look like cars are driving in the Straits. What happens if the link to the GPS satellite breaks down? or if war breaks down and only the US is allowed the accurate sort of GPS?
I’m a runner, I have trialled a GPS run tracker on my phone. There are high retaining walls and I run under things. When it loses the signal it draws a straight line from the last position to the new one. So on a corner approaching home it has me running through a house.
I use a Polar footpod to measure pace and distance instead. It notes every footfall. I know where I’ve been and I’m not into posting it on social media.
My wife was the victim of this way back in the Noughties. A local university posted jobs which were right down her line. Very unusually detailed but she hit them all. She never even got an interview. The uni was/is notorious for this. Advertising to fulfil the legal requirements but they have an internal candidate they have promised the post to. If they had interviewed my wife they would have had to give her the job.
The job I currently have was vacant for two years while they advertised it internally. I spotted it the moment they went outside, I subscribed to the right job listing email. They latched onto me and practically begged me to take the job.
Meatsack horses may be out of the battlefield but they are being reintroduced in the form of robot ones. Ukraine are trialling them as ways to deliver supplies to front line troops and as a med-evac carrier.
Giving casualties to this as med-evac changes warfare. The general calculation is that wounding one soldier takes three out as they care for and transport the casualty. If the care is temporary and then the caring troops remain on site and ready the advantage of wounding is removed.
Considering UKR is fighting a more numerous enemy this could be key for them.
It’s when my phone suggests grocer’s apostrophe words which make no linguistic sense I begin to worry. When the correct plural is not offered I really begin to worry. This looks like an AI issue. It has learned that some people use grocer’s apostrophes instead of correct plurals and does not know they are wrong.
In New Zealand since just about forever you drive up, punch in how much fuel you want (or fill) place nozzle then lock it on leaving you free to for eg use the free screenwash on the car. It automatically stops like a fill does. It doesn’t have to involve paying at the pump either. Petrol stations here make a mint from the few pennnies over we usually manage so have a disincentive to install it in UK. It was old when we left NZ in ’93, still working last I was back. Nobody dears buck the trend.
Also you don’t have to breathe benzene fumes standing over it while you fill. You can set it to fill then wander into the kiosk knowing how long it will take.
Indeed, I have a patent water still at work (No you can’t circumvent it). After running for 7 hours the plug when I pull it out is WARM. Its an immersion heating coil (one reason why no conversion, baked ingredients). Has to be switched off, water running 30min before the end to let the coil cool down and avoid tripping the thermal overloads.
The overloads got tested once, while at lunch the tubing on the tap came off so the water drained. They operated and cut the power. Can be reset when cool by simply pressing them back in.
I replaced the TV with a fish tank which sits on the TV stand now. I boxed up the large one I bought my wife so she could game properly and put it in her car when we parted. Our kids have grown and flown no sign of grandkids.
I did not replace it largely for Scottish Political reasons. I decline to be taxed so the BBC can lie to the nation(s).
I recently reconfirmed to the licensing that I do not require a license. Their system cunningly swaps the last two questions to try and catch you out. So beware.
I honestly do not miss it. I tried Netflix on this laptop but wasn’t very impressed and got bored. That happened twice. There are so many books to read and the net. Twitter is the thief of time too.
I have no intention of going back.
NZ houses are designed NOT to fall down on your head in earthquakes. Nobody has died in a domestic house due to that (in the big Kaikoura Quake one elderly gent died of a heart attack as their Christchurch Quake damaged old farmhouse fell down around them but not on them.
The killer is that the house may get red stickered afterwards meaning you can’t live in it. Whole areas in ChCh were red zoned and have become parkland. That was the effect of liquifaction. Bad place to build.
Our first bought house in Dunedin down in the South was on the former salt marsh which became market gardens which became enforced low rise suburbia. When it rained & it was high tide pools of water would form in the garden. We were separated from 2miles of golden sand Pacific surf beach by high wide compacted sand dunes. Roads on part, a heritage rail on the rest. Playing fields. We lay in bed at night being lulled to sleep by the surf.
There was a controversial study comparing driving accident stats in Catholic vs Protestant parts of Europe. You can do that wrt German States. Turns out Catholic countries have significantly higher rates. It was put down to the fact that Catholics get their sins cancelled in confession and penance. This fosters a devil may care attitude.
Protestants don’t get that and some sects even say only a sinless elect can ascend to heaven. Creates more respect for the law and rules generally.
Young person asked me recently why I wouldn’t want a sports car. I did not reply that putting a large sea kayak on one would be tricky. I pointed out they don’t do road humps. It is not possible to get to my place of work without crossing a road hump. Traffic calming, 20mph Secondary, Primary & Nursery.
It’s a matter of density. A spawn used to work at Highland Hotels on the shore of Loch Awe. The turnoff of the road to Oban was single track and the turnofffs to each Hotel ditto. American midwest tourist gets off plane uses Google Maps to guide a rental car. Beyond Crianlarich if they get that far things get interesting.
The two lane road along the north side of Loch Tay becomes intermittently narrowed by bridges over burns. Timing the approach to those wrt oncoming cars is an art. I wouldn’t trust an AI to notice the bridge and plow into it. They don’t have railings.
